Steve Forbes, the editor in chief of Forbes Media, famously said "Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business.(1*)" The most powerful method to define your company is by branding. It will become the core of your existence and one of the key differences between success and failure is relatable branding. In the past 9 months, I have been building my start-up business, The Martini. Over that time I alone came up with the vision for the company and developed a reliable prototype with a decent number of earlier adopters. But and now I am extremely happy and relieved to have 2 additional members joining me in this journey to create the software which will assist filmmakers to collaborate and create a film in the most efficient way possible. With the new members on board, it brought on a new perspective on what the company can and should be. As such it is time to have then be reflected in our branding.
So what is branding? I can start by telling you what it is not. A logo is not a brand, and a brand is not a logo. A logo is what your target audience will easily recognize you by albeit it's just a small part of your overall branding. Yes, we can start the rebranding with the logo, as that could be the most exciting part for some people, but it would not and should not be the only element of the rebranding.
One good example would be Apple. Their logo has changed a few times since the 70s. In 1997, to keep up with trends and his vision, Steve Jobs changed Apple’s rainbow logo to a sleek metallic one. But that logo was part of Job's rebrand to the company's vision of offering minimalistic, contemporary products. (2*)
So we can say that a brand encompasses the notion which you want your current or potential customers to feel when using or speaking about your product. It can be the way your website looks, marketing materials, direct communication with your customers, and the purpose of the product itself. In summary, the logo is the visual element with the brand as the feeling.
So to be clear we are not completely overhauling our company's image with the rebranding. It is more of an enhancement of what we already have. Below are the goals as to why we are rebranding; which will ultimately have an impact on the company's profit margin.
Working towards our mission statement.
We have been working extensively on enhancing our company's mission statement so that it clearly reflects the objectives that we wish to achieve.
Wanting to connect better with our customers
At the moment all of our customers are early adopters (who have been great!) and we want to reach new customers to join our growing community. A refreshing look and feel, while focusing on the new features that we will be released, will provide us with that advantage to create new growth in this space.
Reflecting our values, new goals, and features
Currently, we have screenwriting and messaging functionalities in our app. However, we have written up a well-defined product roadmap for our customers and eager to have them released in the coming months. Also with our new mission statements and goals, we need a brand that reflects how much we have grown as a startup.
Differentiating ourselves from the competitors
Even though we are a brand new start-up, our current and future capabilities are beginning to directly assert with those of our competitors. By setting ourselves apart from our competitors, we can inform our potential customers that our product is offering a better solution than what they are currently used to.
To achieve our goals of rebranding, the 3 of us had to do some tough tasks that will ensure our rebranding strategy will be able to achieve the above-mentioned reasons
Research and analyze
We had to assess where we are at branding wise in the market. Thankfully as we are a start-up and still flying low in the radar ( hopefully not for too long) we were able to experiment with our branding on how we want to be perceived. We compared ourselves with our current competitors and would be competitors and identified their strengths and weaknesses and the area where we can be the alternative solution.
Defining a clear goal and target base
Evaluate the company's long term goals. What we are solving? What we want to be known for? What is our personality? Understanding who our target customer base is and how to reach them. This will also help with how our product should evolve over time.
Presenting our persona
As mentioned at the beginning, the logo is what the audience sees, which is also the visual part of the branding. We have to come up with both the visual and content identity.(3*) Examples of visual identity would be: What is our color palette and what fonts to use. For the content identity; we may have to make a decision on which platforms/channels should our product be active on and what our tone(casual or formal) would be when communicating with our customers.
At the moment the team is hard at work working on numerous fronts to get this rebranding project launched apart from the many other tasks to ensure that The Martini app continues to improve on itself. If you want to stay current on our development please do subscribe to the newsletter and social media accounts, Twitter, and Instagram. And also do share this blog with your network.
Author’s Notes/References